


Overwatch: Lost Letters

by OCWotchny



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Major Original Character(s), Omnic Crisis, Original Fiction, Prequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 06:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15479994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OCWotchny/pseuds/OCWotchny
Summary: During the crisis, mankind faced machines that proved to be the biggest threat they had ever faced as a species. As a result, the UN created Overwatch, a team of unique heroes with ability unmatched by others in the world. Even so, no ordinary human could ever hope to face the might of the omnics with the strength they have on their own...Fareeha Amari, now the Strike Commander of the new Overwatch team, uncovers secrets thought long buried, regarding one of the most controversial and critical projects humanity came up with in order to find a way to end the crisis.(Set after the events of Overwatch: Campaign Mode)





	Overwatch: Lost Letters

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, I'm back with another fic. Will I ever chill? No.
> 
> This fic takes place in the same universe as Sapphixxx and GeneralIrritation's fic "Overwatch: Campaign Mode", which is honestly the best of its kind and I reread it constantly. You don't need to have read it to read this, but please god do yourself a favor and go and experience their story.
> 
> This is an idea I've had for a while, which sprung up while I was fighting through the first area in NieR: Automata. It goes into the story of soldiers who were made during the crisis who infiltrate Omniums and destroy them from the inside, which acts as a major turning point during the crisis. There's a dark secret surrounding them, however, leading to all data that had to do with it being destroyed after the end of the war to avoid backlash...

_ “Unit 21, do you copy? Relay visuals of the target omnium security measures. I repeat, Unit 21, relay visuals of target omnium security, over.” _

“I copy. Target security siren in sights. Waiting for confirmation from Commanding Officer to take the shot, over.”

_ “Permission given, Phi. Take the shot.” _

A projectile approximately the size of a dry-erase marker silently zips through the air, embedding itself into the metal base of what looks to be like nothing other than a simple lamp post. From its sides spring out four long, thin legs, which inject themselves into the pole before emitting a small spark that signals an electrical shock. The light at the top dims almost instantly, and a few meters away, a massive gate lets out a resounding  _ ‘click’. _ Somewhere on a nearby building, a woman rises from her hiding spot underneath the cover of an air vent and carefully rests a large rifle across the ground. Her blinding white boots crunch against the snow, and her visor glints against the bright winter sun. 

“Commencing phase 2 of operation, Commander. Infiltration route is already secured. Over.”

* * *

 

Inside of the office Winston had commandeered underneath the King’s Row base, files and papers could be seen stacked high enough and in so many columns that they appeared to be walls, making individual cubicles which appeared to be the only actual areas of free space in the room. In these few squares were Winson himself, Lucio Correia Dos Santos, and Fareeha Amari, pouring themselves over documents related to Overwatch in its prime. Even with state of the art AI and electronics, companies and organizations worldwide still kept paper records in the modern world, and Overwatch had been no different in its heyday. Though many of its records had been either terminated or encrypted in the cloud network, the since-shutdown watchpoints still held filing cabinets after filing cabinets of lost data. Fareeha, being the newly instated Strike Commander after the UN's decision to revoke the PETRAS act, had taken it upon herself to go through all of these documents so that she could know Overwatch like the back of her hand. Ana had told her that it was a little overkill, and Jack had warned her that she'd burn herself out before she even started, but Fareeha is nothing if not thorough. Winston was there because of his own knowledge of Overwatch, and Lucio was there to be a friend. The last member of their party, however, was not present, because she had been sent on a mission to go and collect even more papers.

The last member is Hana 'D.Va' Song, who had recently been cleared to walk without her cane after completing rehabilitation and gaining a nice, shiny robotic kneecap after her original one had been all but obliterated from one Gabriel Reyes' foot.

(She had won that fight either way though, so she isn't really bitter about it.)

"Y'know," she says, using her leg to push aside a stack of boxes as she comes into the room once again, her arms full of the documents Winston had asked her to fetch. "Lucio has robotic legs, too. He has two of them, actually. I'm sure they're useful."

Fareeha doesn't even look up, her eyes going through line after line of the file she'd found labelled "TOP SECRET: DESTROY AFTER 09/10/2045". "I bet they are," she says, screwing her mouth to the side. "But he also has music, which is the only thing keeping me awake. Thank you for helping, Hana." Said music had recently been changed to something with a bit more of a beat, which was giving both Fareeha and Winston the energy they needed to keep going after days of gathering information.

Hana grumbles, but lets it go as she settles down on a cushion next to her. "Have you at least found anything interesting yet? Yesterday, all you were looking at were financial records," she babbles. reaching for the file sitting on Fareeha's lap. "This says top secret, right? That means it has to be good."

Fareeha starts after the file when she feels it leave her thigh, Hana's name halfway past her lips before her exhaustion gets the best of her and she accidentally knocks the folder out of the MEKA pilot's hands.

* * *

 

This is not the first Omnium Phi has broken into, but it may be one of the biggest. She has no idea how long she's been running for, following the map on her HUD towards the core at the center. She hopes she can find it soon; the longer she stays in this factory, the more the chance of her being caught increases. Eliminating omnics may be what she was raised for, but taking on a horde of the enemy in these narrow hallways sounds like nothing less than a death sentence.

Finally, there's a change of scenery, though it reveals nothing good. The doorway she had just gone through has lead her into a wide, open area, revealing several gargantuan, menacing omnics. Phi comes to a sudden stop, skidding on her heels and rushing to the railing to try and get a closer look. She taps the side of her visor and zooms in using her HUD, looking through the great showers of sparks as large mechanical arms and drills work tirelessly on the massive weapons being created. 

“Commander, this is Unit 21 requesting laser-relay hologram communications, over. You may want to take a look at this.” If she’s scared, she doesn’t show it, her voice staying calm and level while she examines the environment. Below, at the base of the omnic’s feet, she can see several Bastion units and OR-12s standing guard.

_ “Unit 21, this is command. We see what you’re seeing--- it doesn’t look like the weapons are active. Other units have reported similar findings of large omnic projects being put into motion by the enemy, but no front line fighters have reported sightings in combat. Your mission still stands; take out the presiding God AI, and shut down the omnium. If the plant goes out, that thing is nothing more than a waste of space. You’re clear to keep going. Over.” _  Communications shut down, and Phi grunts. Giant omnics in production, and nobody has told her? Keeping information like that quiet could have jeopardized the mission. With little else to show her irritation other than a huff, she scans the area once more. 

Past the sentries and the dormant machines, she finally finds her target- A sealed door outlined in red, labelled for authorized personnel only. It’s going to be a bit of a hike, and there isn’t any way to avoid confrontation with guarding omnics, but the end of her mission is in sight, just beyond her fingertips. All she has to do is take a little leap.

Backing away from the railing, she gives herself a slight running start before planting her hands on the guardrail and vaulting herself over. She somersaults through the air, and plummets towards the ground below the catwalk, ready to begin the home stretch.

* * *

 

“Oops,” Hana says, watching as papers fall through the air and on to the floor. The file had been bursting at the seams with papers before it had been instantly emptied of its contents, which included pages of documents, headshots, blueprints, and maps. None of them seemed familiar to Fareeha, and even Winston (who had looked up after the entire thing had been knocked everywhere) looked at the pages with confusion. One thing seemed to be clear, however; whatever the file had contained had been a project of incredible size and scale. The only question was: how had it been kept a secret, if there was so much to it?

Fareeha stops massaging her temples long enough to pick up a paper, heaving a sigh as she looks over the text. “Really, Hana. Be a little more careful, next time? I don’t have any idea what this could be-- I don’t want it to get disorganized before I have a chance to look at it.”

Hana, for her part, at least looks sheepish about it. She tries to make up for it by picking up papers and stacking them together, only occasionally glancing at what may be on the pages. One page catches her eye, however; it’s a profile, fit with a name, height and weight, and other information in paragraph form at the bottom. Over the entire paper is large red lettering (which is what initially caught her eye), stamped on to neatly read “DEVAS”. The stamp covers most of the photo printed in the top right corner, with the only truly visible part being a pair of pale, empty eyes belonging to a girl Hana has never seen before. At first glance, they almost look like they’re the same age, but the girl on the paper seems so… Different. She looks around the page for a name, and only finds one thing that could possibly be it-- neatly printed next to  _ “Designation” _  are the words:  _ Unit 21, Φ _ . 

“Winston,” she says after a moment, grabbing his attention. “What is DEVAS? I don’t think I’ve heard of it.” The name grabs Fareeha’s attention as well, who turns to Winston for an answer only to see him lost in thought. He wrinkles his nose and pushes up his glasses, letting out a low hum.

“DEVAS, huh?” he asks, crossing his arms. “The name rings a bell, but I’ve never actually heard anything about it. After the Recall, I went through all of Overwatch’s old records, and I remember coming across something of the same name, but… Athena said all records had been deleted from the database. I didn’t think much of it, at the time. 

Lucio, who had stopped DJing to help pick up the fallen papers, looks at a few of the documents in his hands and snorts. “Sure doesn’t look deleted to me. I think someone has a few secrets they forgot to cover up.” Everyone looks to Fareeha at that moment, and she feels her face heat up.

“Uh,” she says, instantly regretting the noise the moment it leaves her mouth. “I- er, Athena? Get me all information on anything labelled DEVAS, and override any passcodes.”

Athena hums alive over the intercoms, voice calm. “Greetings, Strike-Commander Amari. What is your verification code?”

“Two Bravo Nine Sierra.”

A moment passes as Athena processes the verification and the order itself. “Search inconclusive. No data exists other than lone folder labelled,  _ DEVAS units, _ but the folder is empty. Any imprint has been wiped clean.”

Fareeha looks at Lucio, then at Hana, then at Winston. Each one of them is just as confused as anyone else. “ _ DEVAS units _ ?” She finally says, knitting her brows together and going back to the papers littering the ground. “What on earth is a DEVAS unit?”

* * *

 

Phi always wondered why the soldiers on the front lines preferred guns and tanks. Sure, they allowed for distance fighting, but it never did  _ feel _ the same. Nothing could quite compare to the feeling of her blade slicing through the thick barrel of a Bastion unit’s minigun, or the thrill of darting past the fire of an OR-12 unit before piercing through its orbital socket. During these battles, her capability shines, and what few emotions she shows are plain as day on her face. She is a soldier, a specially engineered DEVAS unit, and this is what she was raised to do-- what she was  _ made _ to do: kill omnics, and tear them into so many pieces that there isn’t any chance of them being put back together after she’s done. 

_ ‘But,’ _ she tells herself, hopping off of the OR-12 and placing her blade into the sheath that sits across the small of her back.  _ ‘I’m not here to enjoy myself, I’m here to finish a mission. We’re almost done.’ _

Even after massacring the guarding units, Phi keeps a certain level of caution. She’s going to have to hack through the firewall defense systems, which means she’s going to be a sitting duck for the next three minutes. 

Well,  _ she’s  _ not going to be hacking it, but the small device on her hip will still take some time to do its job. 

Scanning the area around her one more time, Phi takes off a small metal box from her belt and presses several buttons before jamming it into the control panel to the left of the door. After, she turns around and crosses her arms to lean against the wall, reaching up and pushing her visor up to her forehead. She presses the button on her communications device in her ear and rings in command, letting out a small sigh to try and relax in the few seconds of downtime that she may have.

_ “Unit 21, this is command; what is it? Over.” _

“I’m hacking through the door,” she says, flipping her arms around and crossing one leg over the other. “In a few minutes, I’ll be in the mainframe and awaiting orders to complete the mission. Requesting dropship to be sent to the rendezvous coordinates.”

_ “Requesting a dropship so soon? Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself? _

Phi snorts. “You know as well as I do that I’ll still be waiting for the ship by the time I get there, Commander. I like to think ahead.”

She hears a small chuckle from the other line, and lets the corner of her lips quirk up into a smirk.  _ ‘Understood, Phi. Dropship being sent to rendezvous coordinates, ETA twenty minutes. You don’t need to call back for permission to act after you’re in; you know the drill. This is Command, over and out.” _

Right after she hears the  _ ‘click’ _ of the line being shut off, a small beep to her right tells her that the door is ready to be open. She presses a button on the holoscreen, grabs her device from the jack, and slips inside before the firewall systems can reactivate and seal it shut behind her.

The room she steps into is dark, save for the eerie blue glow of several screens calculating all of the omnium’s processes on their own.

One fatal flaw of omniums is that there are no security systems in place in the mainframes, as omnics cannot risk any damage to the technology presiding in the control room. DEVAS units like Phi use this to their advantage, as it means they can safely retrieve valuable data and override all enemy systems without the worry of turret fire from behind.

Phi slowly approaches her target with her hacking device equipped, and looks up at the massive, two-faced structure that harbors this region’s controlling God AI. 

“Janus…” She mutters to herself, running her fingertips across the surface of its shell before pressing several buttons on her hacking device and jamming it into the jack at the base. While that does its thing once more, she slides over to the computer to the next to it, immediately pulls up a keyboard to start pulling up data. She pulls down her visor and presses a button on the side to activate its recording sequence, then begins her penultimate job of manually going through all data and backlogs in the mainframe while her HUD copies it into its memory for later analysis by the UN. It takes a solid ten minutes- she has to go through every file in the system- but it gets done, and she swipes away the keyboard before turning back to Janus. 

“All files scanned,” she says, reaching up and hovering her finger over the same recording button. “No abnormalities detected. Saving recording file for later analysis.” She presses the button again, then reaches and takes her other device from the drive. “AI CONTAINED,” it reads, and she smiles before clipping it back on to her belt and taking off the last object that she needs to complete the final stage of her mission.

She sets the timer on the EMP device for ten minutes, and presses the button to start the countdown right as she tosses it over her shoulder and takes off running.

* * *

 

Fareeha, Winston, and Hana sit in the lounge of the King’s Row watchpoint, looking over more of the documents that were in the DEVAS project folder. Lucio had left a while ago, claiming that he didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking for, anyways. Hana remembers seeing him head for the kitchen, and wishes she’d had the same idea at the time; she doesn’t really know why she’s here, either. 

“I’m still not sure what these soldiers were even  _ for _ ,” she says, looking over two profiles side by side. “Each one has a mission count, but I haven’t seen what the actual missions were.”

Winston leans back and adjusts his glasses, squinting at the small text on the pages. “Well, from what I can find, they were units designed for stealth-- all of the gear they used had some kind of cloaking device, or were used to break through cybersecurity typically used for barriers or doors. They obviously…”

His voice trails off in Hana’s ears as she tunes him out, grabbing a paper boldly titled “ **MISSION REPORT** ” and reading over its contents. It doesn’t take long for her to put the puzzle together, her eyebrows lifting in surprise as she reads over the third paragraph.

“Oh,” she says. “So that’s what they did.”

Fareeha and Winston stop talking to look over at her, brows arched in interest. She turns the paper around and shows it to them, her finger resting over the line that had finally revealed the answer.

Fareeha leans forward and reads the fine print, and Hana can tell when she figures it out as well from the way her jaw goes a little slack.

It’s silent in the room, for a solid minute, all of them in awe at what they may have just uncovered.

Fareeha is the first to speak, eyes glued to the mess on the coffee table below her. “These units…” she murmurs, voice incredulous. “They… They broke into omniums on their own and shut down all systems and caused the manufacturing centers to overheat and explode. These soldiers are why we won the war-- they’re how we ended the crisis.”

* * *

 

Phi looks at the timestamp in the corner of her HUD as she ascends the latter to the roof where the rendezvous point awaits, reassuring herself that she’d arrived just in time. The EMP had activated two minutes ago, which means that the omnium is going to go into meltdown at any minute. 

As if on cue, the small airship that will serve as her ride home flies over the horizon, circling around her as it slows down to make its descent to where she’s standing. She takes off her visor and lets it fall down to rest over her collar, face passive as she follows the movement of the ship as it closes in.

The pilot is friendly when she boards, offering a broad smile and a wave as she takes a seat.

“How’d the mission go?!” He asks, overly enthusiastic. 

Her voice remains passive, and she crosses one leg over the other before leaning back and allowing herself to get comfortable. “The EMP went off approximately three minutes ago. I advise we get going before things get a little too hot for us here.” 

The pilot laughs, flicking a few switches before pulling the airship up and turning it to start back the way it had came. “Great!” He says, eyes hidden from the glare of the sun over his helmet. “You’re doing good work, Unit 21! You DEVAS are something else-- I don’t know where we would be without you guys going in and getting your hands dirty with these jobs. Keep fighting for us, you got that?”

Phi ignores him in favor for looking out the window, her gaze sweeping over the numerous omnic units that now sit deactivated from the EMP. Their bodies litter the grounds like trash in a parking lot; useless scrapheaps that will soon be unrecognizable. She folds her hands over her lap as she catches sight of the giant omnic being built at the center, and briefly wonders just what kind of damage it would do if it were to have been completed.

_ ‘Well,’ _ she thinks, facing forward as they finish passing over the omnium.  _ ‘It’s not like it matters now. It won’t ever wake up for us to find out. _ ’

There’s a loud  **_BOOM!_ ** from behind, and the cabin shakes from the force of the blast as the omnium finally overheats and explodes. Phi closes her eyes, unfazed, and takes the chance to rest on her flight home.


End file.
